Does nrf5340 Audio DK support Bluetooth direction finding?

[Frey]

Hello,

I am a college student researching the application of BLE Audio. Our lab purchased some nrf5340 Audio DK boards to test BLE Audio. I see that 5340 SoC support direction finding, but there's no mentioning in the description of the board itself. Does the board have built in antenna array to make it work? If not, can we connect external antenna array to it?

Thank you for helping

[SwRa]

Hello Frey,

It should be possible to get the direction finding application working with an nRF5340 Audio DK since the SoC supports direction finding.. There are no built-in antenna array within any of the DK's.. you will need to connect an external antenna array.. Also, you will need to check that you have access to the GPIO pins that are used to control the RF muxes.. The direction finding itself uses the Zephyr controller.. You will also need to keep in mind that you won't be able to use audio in this scenario.. We would recommend to use the nrf5340 DK or any of the DK's mentioned in the direction finding sample rather than the audio DK..

Best Regards,

Swathy

[Frey]

Thank you for the reply. Could you explain further why audio can't be used together with direction finding? I thought BLE Audio is a layer on top of BLE core and direction finding is a feature for physical & datalink layer

[SwRa]

Hi Frey,

This is because LE Audio and Direction finding uses different controllers.. The controller used for Bluetooth have specific features.

The one we use for Bluetooth LE Audio supports ISOCHRONOUS channels but it does not support CTE (Continuous Tone Extension) needed for Direction Finding. The controller used for Direction Finding supports CTE but does not support ISOCHRONOUS channels and to do both at the same time you need a controller supporting both at the same time.

In addition, the LE Audio requires updates to the datalink layer in the current version, compared to older versions of the standard.

Best Regards,

Swathy